Avoiding Pain Quotes & Sayings

If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery. — Albert Einstein

My house was built by a partnership called Desire and Ignorance; they often work together, and always with disastrous consequences. It's surprising they aren't more talked of in the press. They are great survivors but incompetent builders. Desire is famous only for pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, while Ignorance casts a veil over all his unexamined assumptions and makes wrong ones every hour. Together, they created the psychological reality where I live. Hardly a surprise, therefore, if it's unfit for purpose! — Simon Parke

Before and since, all her effort was directed not on avoiding pain but on getting through it as quickly as possible. — Toni Morrison

The process of transforming the heart can be difficult because as we open it, we inevitably encounter our own pain and become more aware of the pain of others. In fact, much of our personality is designed to keep us from experiencing this suffering. We close down the sensitivity of our hearts so that we can block our pain and get on with things, but we are never entirely successful in avoiding it. Often, we are aware of our suffering just enough to make ourselves and everyone around us miserable. Carl Jung's famous dictum that "neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering" points to this truth. But if we are not willing to experience our own hurt and grief, it can never be healed. Shutting out our real pain also renders us unable to feel joy, compassion, love, or any of the other capacities of the heart. — Don Richard Riso

The pain that's created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself. Because if you don't begin to work on those ideas that God has blessed you with, they will become stagnant inside of you and eventually begin to eat away at you. You might seem OK on the outside, but inside you will be ill from not getting those ideas out of your heart and into the world. Stalling leads to sickness. But taking steps, even baby steps, always leads to success. — Russell Simmons

There is nothing dishonorable about abandoning pain. Sometimes peace is most quickly found when a man simply stops avoiding it." He shifted slightly in the dark. "And you never again lay awake all night, staring at darkness and thinking of them. — Robin Hobb

Most bloggers have no institutional credibility, and so they must build it, by linking transparently, and allowing you to easily double check their work. But more than anything, because linking sources is such an easy thing to do, and the motivations for avoiding links are so dubious, I've detected myself using a new rule of thumb: if you don't link to primary sources, I just don't trust you. — Ben Goldacre

It is our contemporary culture's tragedy to have lost any sense of suffering as a positive dimension of human existence. Beginning with the premise that life ought to be without pain, we make suffering something to be avoided at all cost. We consider the equation between evil and suffering so self-evident that we make avoiding suffering the equal of fighting evil. No wonder we are the most narcotized generation ever to inhabit the earth, searching for ever more effective addictive patterns to anaesthetize our existence. — Luke Timothy Johnson

Life is only complete when your loved ones know you. When they know your true feelings, when they know who and how you love. Life is simple when your secret is gone. Gone is the pain that lurks in the stomach at work, the pain from avoiding questions, and at last the pain from hiding such a deep secret. — Robbie Rogers

We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain. — Saint Augustine

The underlying motivation that drives all addiction is our insistence on avoiding pain. However, the pain you are avoiding is based in the past, and has nothing to do with the present moment. — Leonard Jacobson

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain. — Thomas Jefferson

One day I looked at something in myself that I had been avoiding because it was too painful. Yet once I did, I had an unexpected surprise. Rather than self-hatred, I was flooded with compassion for myself because I realized the pain necessary to develop that coping mechanism to begin with. — Marianne Williamson

It's not life in the present moment that is intolerable; the pain we are avoiding has already happened. We are living in reverse. — Geneen Roth

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present - our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes our love - everything that moves us most deeply. — Jack Kornfield

Not just pain, but bullshit. Avoiding bullshit. — Robert Greene

Isn't it amazing that we'll cause ourselves more pain by thinking about, and avoiding something we're afraid of, or something we know we must deal with, but don't want to face? The best thing you can do is just do it, just face the fear and get it over with. How do you get the courage? You create your courage by just taking action ... — James A. Murphy

The animal liberation movement is saying that where animals and humans have similar interests - we might take the interest in avoiding physical pain as an example, for it is an interest that humans clearly share with other animals - those interests are to be counted equally, with no automatic discount just because one of the beings is not human. — Peter Singer

For an infrequent action to become a habit, the user must perceive a high degree of utility, either from gaining pleasure or avoiding pain. — Nir Eyal

Embrace those parts of yourself that you've skillfully avoided until now. That's your true adventure. — Gina Greenlee

When you are avoiding your pain you are really only avoiding your growth. — Bryant McGill

Just... isn't giving up allowed sometimes? Isn't it okay to say, 'This really hurts, so I'm going to stop trying'?"
"It sets a dangerous precedent."
"For avoiding pain?"
"For avoiding life. — Rainbow Rowell

The third kind of loneliness is avoiding unnecesssary activities. When we're lonely in a "hot" way, we look for something to save us; we look for a way out. We get this queasy feeling that we call loneliness, and our minds just go wild trying to come up with companions to save us from despair. That's called unnecessary activity. It's a way of keeping ourselves busy so we don't have to feel any pain. It could take the form of obsessively daydreaming of true romance, or turning a tidbit of gossip into the six o'clock news, or even going off by ourselves into the wilderness. The point is that in all these activities, we are seeking companionship in our usual, habitual way, using our same old repetitive ways of distancing ourselves from the demon loneliness. Could we just settle down and have some — Pema Chodron

It's nothing more than a mental habit to idealize another time, another condition, another reality. It is simply a way to avoid the reality of our lives right now. And in avoiding the reality of our present circumstances, we avoid the miracles they offer. Everyone does it because that's the way the ego mind works. But we can stare down this self-defeating habit and cultivate a truer perspective: that wherever we are is the perfect place, and whatever time it is now is the perfect time. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't improve things, particularly ourselves. But indulging the thought that if only we were somewhere else things would be better is a surefire way to experience pain. — Marianne Williamson

Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy-and time. The more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half hells, the quicker you'll start feeling those minute-and-a-half happinesses. — Leigh Newman

Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel. Then it holds us to our integrity, claiming the attention we withhold. The thing which calls our attention may be a repressed experience or some unexpressed and important part of who we are. Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives. Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometime for many years, gathering the courage to experience them. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Every man aims at avoiding what causes him pain; the activities of government ultimately consist in the infliction of pain. All great achievements of mankind were the product of a spontaneous effort on the part of individuals; government substitutes coercion for voluntary action. — Ludwig Von Mises

She wasn't afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.
'I'm afraid of committing myself,' she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.
Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic dissappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life. — Paulo Coelho

the art of life, mostly, the art of avoiding pain — Henri Cole

It's all well and good saying you avoid pain by avoiding relationships, but what about the wonderful things you're avoiding as well? What about the joy and the intimacy and the trust that come with finding someone you love? — Jane Green

How can a man find a sensible way to live? One way and one only- Philosophy. And my philosophy means keeping that vital spark within you free from damage and degradation, using it to transcend pain and pleasure, doing everything with a purpose, avoiding lies and hypocrisy, not relying on another person's actions or failings. To accept everything that comes, and everything that is given, as coming from that same spiritual source. — Marcus Aurelius

All beings are conscious and have their own conscious experience. All living things have similar goals of obtaining nourishment, seeking companionship and avoiding pain. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Pain in this life is not avoidable, but the pain we create avoiding pain is avoidable. — R.D. Laing

The British system denied any role for human creativity, and instead argued, that if man merely followed his hedonistic desires, pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, objective laws would naturally guide society to achieve the best allocation of wealth. — Robert Trout

Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is not an objective. It is the movement of life itself, a process, and an activity. It arises from curiosity and discovery. Seek pleasure and you will quickly discover the shortest path to suffering. Other people, friends, brothers, sisters, neighbors, spouses, even your mother and I are not responsible for your happiness. Your life is your responsibility, and you always have the choice to do your best. Doing your best will bring happiness. Do not be overconcerned with avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. If you are concentrating on the results of your actions, you are not dedicated to your task. — Ethan Hawke

It took my year in England to make me realize how much I had been simply treading water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in and seeking out life. The chance to escape from the reminders of illness and death, from a hectic life, and from clinical and teaching responsibilities was not unlike my earlier year as an undergraduate in St. Andrews: it gave me a semblance of peace that had eluded me, and a place of my own to heal and mull, but most important to heal. England did not have the Celtic, magical quality of St. Andrews - nothing, I suppose, ever could for me - but it gave me back myself again, gave me back my high hopes of life. And it gave me back, my belief in love. — Kay Redfield Jamison

Defensive devaluation is a protective device that makes love bad, trust unimportant and people "no darn good any way". People who have been deeply hurt in their relationships will often devalue love so it doesn't hurt so much. And they often become resigned to never loving again. — Henry Cloud

Because fulfillment is an illusion, the wise must devote themselves to avoiding pain rather than seeking pleasure, living quietly, as Schopenhauer counseled, 'in a small fireproof room' - advice that now struck Nietzsche as both timid and untrue, a perverse attempt to dwell, as he was to put it pejoratively several years later, 'hidden in forests like shy deer.' Fulfillment was to be reached not by avoiding pain, but by recognizing its role as a natural, inevitable step on the way to reaching anything good. — Alain De Botton

Avoiding pain causes endless suffering for you and others. Avoiding pain is really selfishness. — Bryant McGill

This pain you are avoiding is a very necessary pain that will make you strong again. — Stephen Richards

Avoiding our pain is needlessly exhausting. Pain can not be killed. When we attempt to bury our pain, it rises up from the grave of our emotions, haunting us, until we acknowledge its presence. We can heal our pain when we allow it to move through us. — Jaeda DeWalt

Avoiding fear and pain can cause them to grow stronger. The trick with fear is to go with it, to let it do it's work. Once fear has put us in touch with our inner issue it can diminish. In fact, simply acknowledging fear seems to lessen it. — John Earle

I had been simply treating water, settling on surviving and avoiding pain rather than being actively involved in seeking out life. — Kay Redfield Jamison

You can't find peace by avoiding life. — Michael Cunningham

When a person's primary objective is to maximize material pleasures while minimizing discomforts, then life becomes a constant process of "pushing" (trying to push away from discomforts) and "grabbing" (trying to acquire or hold on to that which gives pleasure). With the loss of inner balance that accompanies a habitual "pushing and grabbing" approach to life, a deeper pain ensues-that of becoming aware of the ultimate unsatisfactoriness of the pleasure-seeking/pain-avoiding process itself. — Duane Elgin

Denying emotion is not avoiding the high curbs, it's never taking your car out of the garage. It's safe in there, but you'll never go anywhere. — Brene Brown

You can't always rely on taking the pain. You need to learn to avoid it. — Meg Collett

We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other. — Charlotte Joko Beck

Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life's experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness. Or even that the love we have been given can be trusted. It is natural, even instinctive to prefer comfort to pain, the familiar to the unknown. But sometimes our instincts are not wise. Life usually offers us far more than our biases and preferences will allow us to have. Beyond comfort lie grace, mystery, and adventure. We may need to let go of our beliefs and ideas about life in order to have life. — Rachel Naomi Remen

The greatest satisfaction comes not from chasing pleasure and avoiding pain, but from the radical acceptance of life as it is, without fighting and clinging to passing desires. — Noah Levine

Part of avoiding thoughts about something was not encouraging opportunities for that something to makes itself felt. — Kristin Cashore

Postural exercises such as yoga, Pilates, Egoscues, Alexander technique and martial arts are about avoiding pain and injury as much as helping you feel good. Attractive men and women have good posture. — Liz Miller

What I'd truly been avoiding was love, the strongest binding there is, and the pain that scrapes at your insides when the bond is forcefully broken. — Kevin Hearne

Most people have come to prefer certain of lifes experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness — Rachel Naomi Remen